


Becoming

by stratumgermanitivum, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Claiming, M/M, MCD not for Will or Hannibal, Murder, Personality Shift, Rough Sex, dark!Will, even Hannibal is a bit scared of him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:42:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22365835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stratumgermanitivum/pseuds/stratumgermanitivum, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: “You would take my life from me, yet you question my desire to defend myself?”“Never your life, Hannibal.”“My freedom, then.”The smile Will gave him was chilling. “Of a sort,” he said, his voice a low whisper. “There will never be anyone else for you, Hannibal.”Will Becomes... but his becoming is a shiver like television static, one moment he's Will, the next he's something other entirely.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 57
Kudos: 389





	Becoming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tyler_Durden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyler_Durden/gifts).



> A gorgeous prompt by the AMAZING Tyler! Who asked for Will falling for Hannibal but making him suffer quite a bit. Will can be dark and ruthless with Hannibal, discovering his dark side. Here you are lovely one!

Hannibal had often assigned animalistic traits to people without being particularly conscious of it. The way someone moved, or spoke; their mannerisms and interactions with the world. Those brought to mind creatures Hannibal had seen or encountered, and the association often helped ground him and separate his work from personal involvement.

Will Graham had once been a feral thing, skittish and unpleasant, perhaps a cat found beneath an abandoned house, too long without human company to properly know what to do with it when he encountered it again. Hannibal had watched with unhidden pleasure as he tamed the feline within Will’s clever mind, as he drew forth purrs where once hissing was the only sound he emitted.

Perhaps he had hoped Will would settle into something of a house cat, something lazy and relaxed, slinky and clever. Perhaps he had thought that by burning his mind and soothing it anew, Will would welcome the companionship and care.

But the thing Hannibal had seen behind the bars of BHCI was no longer feline, it was reptilian. One day a chameleon, impeccably presenting a facsimile of human suffering and panic, the next moment collected and calm, as though no emotions had ever crossed his features. The next day a serpent, poised and waiting, unblinking and wise.

It should have been clear that Will was never going to be a house pet when he brought Hannibal a gift, torn apart and devoured, its desired likeness still settled around its head; teeth sharp, bones white and unbreakable, now broken.

“Even Steven,” he’d murmured, voice a sing-song coil of tones that Hannibal hadn’t ever heard from Will before. He’d tilted his head, just enough to break a crick in his neck, and  _ moaned _ at the sensation before standing straight once more, knuckles bloody, lips drawn in a smile.

If Hannibal had hoped to teach Will how to leave his mark, there was no reason to. Will’s design was thoroughly planned, draped across museum bones for Jack Crawford to find. 

“This killer has no fear for the consequences of what he’s done,” Hannibal murmured. Will turned, and his eyes caught Hannibal's. Dark, knowing. Gleeful. 

“You flirt with danger,” Hannibal told him later. “Jack Crawford is a bullheaded man, but not a stupid one.”

“Jack couldn’t see what was right in front of his face until I rubbed his nose in it,” Will countered. “He’ll see what I want him to see.”

Will’s confidence was admirable, but worrisome. He was a fledgling, just out of the nest, too young to be taking such leaps on his own. 

But then Hannibal learned of his betrayal, and things made sense. Of course Will could be wild and out of control, if Jack was backing him. 

And so Hannibal stabbed Jack in the throat, frightened Alana Abigail’s way, and waited for Will. 

Through the window, he saw Will come up the steps slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. He stopped to stare at Alana, spread out across the stoop, and then nudged her aside with his foot so he could get through the door. Her pained cry lingered in Hannibal's head. 

Will's footsteps were a metronome as he made his way through the house. Slow, steady… terrifyingly steady. The feral Hannibal had met in Jack's office wouldn't be so calm. He would be on his knees in the rain beside Alana. He would be rushing into the house begging Hannibal for help. He wouldn't be sending Hannibal a smirk that reeked of poison from around the door before stepping through it.

"It was never in your pathology to play with your food," Will pointed out, carefully sidestepping the thicker pools of blood as he made his way nearer.

"Did you think you could change me, Will?" Hannibal asked in return. The thing that met his eyes smiled again, just a hint of teeth behind those Cupid's-bow lips Hannibal had so coveted, had so often thought of tasting and biting red.

"Haven't I?" He replied. "Where's Jack, Hannibal?"

The doctor blinked, thrown for a moment by the question, and Will's smile grew brighter.

"And Alana? Your protégé, your paramour, so carelessly tossed out, like a Christmas tree in January. Decorations still attached, mind you, how lazy you've been."

Hannibal's eyes narrowed a little and his shoulders rounded in a defensive slouch.

"What were they but obstacles in our way to each other? Who would have taken action of not you? Emboldened with the lie of my betrayal, determined to bring me back around. I've changed you, Hannibal, perhaps more than you know."

Perhaps. Perhaps Will had reached into him and rearranged things. Certainly, Will had been warped into something entirely new. 

Will stepped into his space, wrapping his hand around Hannibal’s wrist. His grip was tight enough to grind the bones together, and Hannibal dropped his knife right into Will’s waiting palm. 

“Is this how we greet each other now?” Will asked, running a thumb over the blade, testing its sharpness. “With fangs bared?”

“You would take my life from me, yet you question my desire to defend myself?”

“Never your life, Hannibal.”

“My freedom, then.”

The smile Will gave him was chilling. “Of a sort,” he said, his voice a low whisper. “There will never be anyone else for you, Hannibal.”

Perhaps there never should have been. Perhaps Hannibal was destined to create himself such a modern Prometheus as this, and share his darkness with just one other. But he had made plans, he had hoped to surprise Will with them before he had betrayed Hannibal so cruelly. With perfume and red hair and deceptive loving words.

Plans like that were not so easily laid aside. They had been groomed, cultivated, trained, prepared for this. They had been healed, fed, and coddled.

“We were supposed to go together,” Hannibal reminded him. Will reached to cup his face.

“Anywhere you say.”

Hannibal’s lower eyelids tensed, trembled, relaxed again. And he swallowed, watching Will’s eyes slip to follow the motion. Predator-like, cold, dangerous. Hannibal’s tongue snaked out to wet his lips.

“Abigail,” he called, watched as for a moment the warmth of the gentle, feline Will Graham seeped through in a blush on his cheeks, before the serpent choked it down once more.

“She’s here?”

“I promised you a life, Will,” Hannibal replied. “A family.”

Will didn’t turn, even when he heard the tentative steps of Abigail Hobbs behind him. He looked at Hannibal, blue to red, before leaning in to press their foreheads together. “I’m glad that hasn’t changed,” he sighed.

Will turned, offering Abigail a smile. There was something wrong about his smile. Abigail saw it too, but her hesitancy broke when Will opened his arms for her. Hannibal knew she’d been lonely these past few months. Afraid. She sought the sort of comfort a father would offer, and he and Will could give her that. 

Will welcomed Abigail into his arms, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered. “You’re just too much of a liability.”

He stabbed the knife into her belly and tugged, splitting skin and organs wide. He lowered her down to the floor, his smile finally genuine. 

“Close your eyes,” Will told her. “This will be so much better for you.”

Hannibal’s mind ground to a halt. His plans, his expectations, all were shattered in one smooth motion, one unpredictable man twisting Hannibal’s life around him. 

Will waited until life left Abigail’s eyes before he stood. His hands dripped blood onto the tile floor. “We should get going,” he said to Hannibal, cool and calm. “They’ll be here soon.”

“Will.” Hannibal's voice cracked, confused and horrified. “Why?”

“You don’t want me to have anything that isn’t you,” Will said, baring his teeth in a smile. “Lucky you, Hannibal. I feel the same.”

Hannibal felt unmoored, dizzy, entirely uncomprehending. He hadn’t anticipated what would hatch from the chrysalis, but this creature was certainly not it. It wasn’t even that Will had become the killers he helped hunt - as he had once so worried he would - it was as though Will had shrugged of the skin of his humanity to leave it behind.

He startled when he felt Will’s fingers against his lips, slick and warm, and parted them on reflex only to taste the familiar bitterness of iron on the tip of his tongue. He parted his lips when Will leaned in to kiss him, but his eyes didn’t close. He couldn’t leave himself so entirely vulnerable to something so dangerous.

For the first time in their lives together, Hannibal was the one who needed a paddle in this new rough sea.

“We should go,” Will repeated, tucking his own lip into his mouth to suck clean the blood there and Hannibal nodded numbly. There was little else they could do.

* * *

The hotel was pay-by-the-hour and Will had spent a long time playing up the fact that they were, indeed, there just for that purpose. The bored bespectacled teenager behind the counter just gave them a quick glance before shrugging and pointing out the rates and handing them a key.

The bed looked sunken, the sheets unclean. The entire room smelled of mildew and the sourness of bad breath. But the shower pressure was good. Will guided Hannibal in before him and stepped in after, dragging the cheap plastic curtain closed to keep at least some of the water from flooding the floor.

“Where are we going?” Will asked him, groaning as the hot water hit his chest and soothed the tension from his bones. “I know you, you’ve made plans.”

In the small shower, Hannibal had no choice but to huddle close to Will. He felt conflicted, part of him gleeful at being granted this, part of him wary of Will’s newfound taste for blood. “I had thought Italy,” he suggested, hesitant. “I had wanted to show you Florence.”

Will cracked an eye open, peeking at him curiously. “‘Had thought.’ And now?”

“Now I wonder if it would satisfy you,” Hannibal admitted. “If, perhaps, your idea of how this would go would be incompatible with mine.”

Will snorted. He placed a hand on Hannibal’s chest, just over the too-quick beat of his heart. “As long as we go together, I don’t care where we go,” he said. “We’re conjoined now, you and I. Interlocked. If you want to show me Florence, Hannibal, I want to see it.”

There, there was a hint of the Will Graham Hannibal knew. A flash of excitement, of genuine pleasure. Will tugged him under the spray, fingers working knots from his hair. 

“When will we go?”

“Tonight,” Hannibal said, helpless in the presence of this creature, beautiful and terrible. “If you’re ready, we’ll go tonight.”

Will’s smile warmed him. “Tonight, then.”

There had been shadows of intimacies between them, touches that lingered, breaths that caught, dialogue that descended into innuendo more often than it should have. More and more, the connection between them had become more than friendly, more than intimate. It had become binding and inescapable.

When Will kissed him under the hot spray of the shower, Hannibal held his face. Stubble just soft enough not to catch, the shift of muscle and skin, the promise of teeth beneath, when Hannibal pressed a little harder to Will’s cheek to widen his jaw and kissed him deeper.

They kissed until the water started to cool, until breathing in the steam made them dizzy and they needed cool, clean air. They kissed and did nothing more, both curious to see how long the anticipation could be drawn, how tight the rope would be before it snapped between them, and who would be the one holding the axe when it did.

They left the hotel clean and redressed, and Will paid for their time with cash.

* * *

Hannibal’s connections had allowed them to fly first class, anonymous. They landed in Italy well-rested and with only the bags they’d carried onto the plane with them. An entirely fresh start for them both; new identities, new clothes, new outlook.

They rented a spacious serviced apartment on the fifth floor while Hannibal considered listings for a proper house. They had the means, the time, the desire to keep safe houses around Europe as they moved through it. Always somewhere to return to, always somewhere to misdirect to, should they need.

Will stood shirtless by the window and cradled a glass in his hand, and Hannibal found himself enamored of the man all over again..

“We should stock the pantry,” Will murmured, his eyes on the streets below. “We didn’t get to use any of our last hunt.”

It had been less of a ‘hunt’ and more of a massacre. Hannibal crossed the room to Will- tentative, always tentative lately- and pulled him back against his chest. Will went with a contented sigh, but his gaze never left the crowded street. 

“There will be time,” Hannibal promised, his nose tucked just under Will’s jaw, breathing in only the clean sweetness Will was meant to smell like. 

Will’s fingers dug into Hannibal’s arm. “I don’t want to wait,” he said. “I’ve waited too long. Wasted too much time without you.”

“I don’t expect you to make things up to me-“

Will whirled on him, wine sloshing in his glass, eyes blazing. “I’m hungry, Hannibal. And impatient. I’ll go without you if I have to.”

“Impatience makes for a messy scene,” Hannibal told him quietly, feeling the coil of the serpent within Will again. The other just blinked at him. 

“It needn’t be immediately,” Will amended. “But it needs to be tonight.” Before Hannibal could protest further, Will reached around him to set his glass aside. He wrapped his arms around Hannibal’s waist in a gentle embrace and pressed their foreheads together. “You gave me a rare gift,” he sighed. “Let me give you one in turn.”

“Everything you are is a gift to me,” Hannibal murmured. Will’s smile grew fangs for a moment.

“Then let me show you everything I am, Hannibal. You so patiently watched my evolution, now witness my becoming.”

Hannibal wanted to deny him, wanted to keep the warmer, softer, gentler Will near for just a moment longer, but he nodded instead, accepting the chaste kiss Will pressed to his mouth. He tasted of wine and hunger. He smelled of ozone.

Will Graham the serpent, Will Graham the storm.

“Tonight,” Will decided after a while. “Then you can finally teach me how to carve and cook properly.”

Hannibal didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have a target. He had nothing but Will, and a vague hope that things would go in their favor. 

Will chose the location, the victim. He plucked the man from an alleyway three hours from their apartment. He  _ destroyed _ him. 

A plastic suit did little when Will was ripping someone to shreds. There was blood in his  _ hair _ , and staining his teeth when he turned to smile at Hannibal. Hannibal hadn’t helped at all. He’d merely stood back and watched as Will shifted, slid, became something else entirely. Became something vicious and fanged. 

But then he smiled at Hannibal, stretching, holding out a cut he wanted to keep for Hannibal to store in the cooler. He looked almost sweet, smiling like that. Yawning softly like some sort of timid creature. 

“I’m tired,” he said, looking up at Hannibal, coy in his mannerisms, bordering on playful. “Take me home? We have that huge bathtub. I want to try it.”

And Hannibal, despite his wariness, was helpless. 

That night, Will slipped between Hannibal’s legs and took his cock into his mouth.

The next morning, Hannibal made a protein scramble for breakfast.

When the serpent slept within him, Will was the man Hannibal had coveted. They took in Florence together. Took a train to Venice. Took a bus to Rome. They walked hand in hand when they had never been able to before, watched each other’s skin tan golden in the sun.

Will grew out his beard. 

Hannibal grew out his hair.

They still teased the knife’s edge of consummation together, playing and taunting and pushing the other until finally something had to give.

Will broke first, hands in Hannibal’s hair and mouth hungry as he ground his cock against Hannibal’s thigh, pressing him to the back of the door to their apartment.

“I need you,” Will groaned, tilting his head back when Hannibal seized his curls and  _ yanked _ . “I need to feel you in me, Hannibal, before I lose my goddamn mind.”

And in this, too, Hannibal was helpless to resist him.

They pulled each other’s clothes free, leaving a trail behind them as they stumbled to the bedroom. Hannibal had taken up tenure at a university, as much to keep himself anonymous as to keep his mind sharp. Will had chosen, for the time being, to remain unemployed, to enjoy the freedom of doing nothing at all. It gave him time to think. It gave him time to ache.

He’d hunted only recently, going out again was a dangerous gamble, but this - sweaty and panting together amidst tangled sheets - was a perfect balm for the fire that burned in him.

“Fuck me,” Will demanded, moaning when Hannibal bit a bruise into the meat of his shoulder, grinding his teeth down harshly as he sucked blood to the surface of Will’s skin. “Make me feel you for days.”

Hannibal reached for lubricant, stretched far enough over Will for Will to catch a nipple between his teeth and tug. 

Will made love with claws and fangs. He dug nails into Hannibal’s shoulders while Hannibal opened him, bit hard at his jaw when Hannibal was too rough. He guided Hannibal with pain and need, until he was clawing at the sheets instead of flesh. 

“In me,” he demanded, hooking a leg around Hannibal’s hips. 

“A moment,” Hannibal whispered, reaching to coat his fingers once more. Will growled, more beast than man, and flipped them. 

“No more moments,” he hissed, reaching behind himself to line Hannibal up. “No more waiting. No more  _ patience.” _ He sank down with a speed that took Hannibal’s breath away, Will’s moan rippling through them both. 

Will was a wild thing, even here. He chased pleasure in rough rolls of his hips, and all Hannibal could do was hold on. 

And then, it was as though he shed that skin again, as though Will was himself again. His moans were softer but deeper, he fucked himself languidly against Hannibal’s cock in a way that brought them both pleasure, that drew panting breaths from them and sounds of need that rode shotgun.

Will didn’t stroke himself, he took his time running his hands over Hannibal’s chest, catching a nipple between his fingers, tugging it, squeezing it, enough for Hannibal to arch up and grasp Will’s hips with broad hands. When Will bent to kiss him it was devouring but gentle, soft,  _ loving _ .

“God you feel so fucking good,” Will whispered, laughing against Hannibal as he thrust in deeper, holding Will down by his shoulders. After a while, he rolled them, pressing Will to the bed and catching his hands behind Will’s knees to spread him wider. “Come on,” he sighed.

Like this, Will was extraordinary. Cheeks flushed and eyes hooded, hair a mess against the pillows as Hannibal started a punishing pace that shoved Will higher up the bed until he was gripping the headboard and moaning his name. Like this, Hannibal had imagined their joining many, many times in the opulent rooms of his mind palace.

He marked Will with lips and teeth, whispered promises against him, brought a hand between them to stroke Will’s cock hard until he came with a desperate cry.

He was beautiful. Vicious atop Hannibal or breathless beneath him, he was beautiful. Hannibal hid gasps against Will’s jaw, joining him in ecstasy, his own moans just as loud and just as eager. 

They collapsed together, exhausted, satiated. Will twined fingers through Hannibal’s hair and tugged. 

“I might just have to keep you,” he said with a laugh. 

“Will you, now?” Hannibal asked, brushing a kiss below Will’s jaw. 

“In sickness and in health,” Will breathed. “In blood and viscera.”

“Perhaps a bit less viscera,” Hannibal suggested. 

Will laughed, dark and beautiful and unsettling. “We’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

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